GOP super PACs gear up to fight tea party

Billionaires with progressive priorities have also been busy creating outside groups. But their committees are more often focused around a pet issue than a single candidate.

Liberal billionaire Tom Steyer has poured millions into the campaigns of candidates who share his view on climate change, while New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has done the same on gun control. Steyer’s NextGen Committee super PAC spent big in Masschusetts — and more recently, the Virginia gubernatorial contest.

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Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio downplayed the role individual super PACs will play in the 2014 election cycle, noting that many consultants who tried to start candidate-linked super PACs in 2012 failed to raise enough money to be effective.

“Start up super PACs are risky propositions for donors — they may not end up raising enough money to be effective, they may not have a professional or board-driven management structure, and they may end up being little more than conduits for consultants to generate business for their firms,” Collegio said.

Rove — convinced the party had thrown away a half-dozen Senate seats in 2010 and 2012 by nominating unelectable right-wing candidates — announced early last year that he would create a new super PAC that would intervene in GOP primaries on behalf of the most electable Republican candidate.

That effort, Conservative Victory Project, has yet to get off the ground in earnest. In the first half of 2013, the group did not raise any money other than a transfer from its parent committee American Crossroads. The Crossroads groups — two super PACs and a 501(c)(4) nonprofit — were easily matched by similar Democratic leaning in the first half of 2013.

Collegio said that Crossroads was designed in part to stem the cottage industry of outside groups by creating a professional board, working to drive down overhead and producing periodic donor reports modeled after corporate earnings reports.

Democrats, for the most part, are going in the opposite direction from individual super PACs and have largely centralized their outside efforts in just a few key committees —all under the control of loyal party hands. Unlike Republicans, they’re not facing a full-blown civil war between two warring factions over the future of the party. As a result, the party is able to centralize their outside money game under one roof.

One of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s closest confidantes, Susan McCue, is helming both the Senate Majority PAC and an effort aimed at boosting Democratic holdings in state legislatures called the Fund for Jobs, Growth and Security.

Ali Lapp — a former top official at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — is running House Majority PAC, which spends super PAC money in House races.

That arrangement of having a small number of professionalized outside groups run by trusted aides gives leadership — particularly Reid — a level of control over the Democratic outside money game that Republicans are in the process of abandoning.

“This is just further proof that Democrats are in fact more fiscally responsible than Republicans, Lapp told POLITICO. “Having dozens of super PACs out there dramatically increases the amount of money that’s siphoned off by overhead, lawyers, and consultants. House Majority PAC has succeeded as the super PAC for House Democrats because we are a very efficient, effective organization whose only priority is to help Democrats win House races.”

House Majority PAC allows big donors to give to the committee’s overall efforts to flip the House back to Democrats — or to earmark some of their specific contributions to go to specific races.

Exceptions exist. Last year’s primary battle in California between Democratic Reps. Brad Sherman and Howard Berman saw several super PACs focused solely on that race dumped money into that House race.

But despite concerns about efficiency, many Republicans are concerned their evolving model of letting dozens of PACs bloom is the right one.

“Compliance is going to be a problem,” acknowledged Rick Tyler, who worked for Newt Gingrich’s campaign in 2012 before jumping over to the pro-Gingrich PAC Winning Our Future.

But Tyler — who emerged as a vocal critic of Crossroads and Rove after the 2012 election — argued that centralizing an entire party’s outside efforts under one or two umbrella groups can pose its own problems — like making sure that messages are custom-tailored for states and candidates.